The MD of a large communications company I work with takes pride in having a secretary print out his e-mails because he can't or won't use a computer. No, he's not seventy years of age – he's just a touch over forty. So what does he hope to accomplish by rejecting or resisting the advance of technology I wonder? As banks improve security on credit cards, using smart chips, and biometric identification devices (iris recognition, fingerprint scans, voice algorhythms etc.) proliferate, so technophobes (people who are afraid of technology) are going to find themselves a seriously disadvantaged minority.
Technology is doing for your business today what we couldn't, in our wildest dreams have imagined, even five years ago. If you lift static or electronic Billboards, outdoor or lamp post ads, point of sale (POS), magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, promotions and PR – and then push the Internet in underneath them – that's our communications foundation and media world of today. So the Internet acts as a superb technology platform on which everything else can function a whole lot more efficiently. The media-type becomes less important because the delivery mechanism is the same.
The best part of this shift is that you no longer need to waste energy, effort or money on mass communications in a shotgun fashion into the marketplace. You can do the old rifle trick of more accurately identifying a select and narrower target audience. Because of the Internet, you're can also direct highly-focused communication messages at that audience. The best part of all is of course, the extraordinary ease of access to and cost-effectiveness of using the Internet.
What does this mean for your business or practice today? Just one hugely important benefit: you can probably stop producing printed brochures. They're out of date almost the moment they come off the press. They're expensive and also generic – meaning they're not custom-crafted to the specific interests or needs of the individual to whom you give them. When you make the shift to an electronic template designed and loaded on your computer system, you can edit, custom-craft, drop in the logo of the prospect and tailor the information to address their unique needs.
The 'customer of one' and 'individuation' are presently two of the most important global business trends. As an example, when you go into a Seattle or other coffee shop, you're able to order a Cappuccino any of about a dozen different ways. Coffee shops identified the desire of the customer to choose the permutations and details themselves, way before bigger business started to recognise the trend. Use that same approach in your business. When you're designing and creating things specially for a client or customer, it's less likely that they'll walk away from your focused-on-them business, to a mass-market competitor. This is what gives you some degree of exclusivity and the much talked-about USP (unique selling proposition) – the 'something' that makes you stand out among the competitive clutter and gives you the edge of difference.
Get to understand social media and the role it can play in networking and marketing your business. Your website should move from being a static, useless electronic brochure into being a Blog (interactive weblog or website) in which you can engage your clients. If you look at a well-designed Blog today, it looks no different from a conventional website. Its advantage though is that you can update it as frequently as you wish. You can engage clients or customers in a forum or discussion. So you start what is the single-most important communications device in business today – a conversation. That's the basis of modern communications. Dialogue, two-way engagement. You talking with them and not at them.
Final thought: Doing just one or two big-bang customer relationship marketing exercises a year is not going to produce a sustainable result. Go for more frequent but shorter contacts, without becoming invasive or irritating. So you stay top of mind. An e-newsletter is a good option but it must be news- and not a history of your business or anything which is not of value to the customer. They must also not be able to read that same news elsewhere. Start thinking about this – it may be the kick start of a whole new era for you.
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